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Published: July .08 th, 2008
9:44 AM
How much of what went into
the development of the multiplayer was inspired by what the
community had to say? Like, say, the party system?
Cliff Bleszinski: That
was a no-brainer. In a perfect world, if we could go back
in time and put that in there that would be great. But there
is so much work involved in making that functional and intuitive
and tweaking it with the UI, and it involved non-stop hands
on work by our best programmers.
Gamers don’t just expect a game
these days, they expect a platform. They come for the graphics
and the campaign and they stay for the co-op and the multiplayer.
That’s the bottom line and it’s what keeps the
game going for months if not years.
By keeping the game going do you also mean downloadable
content like maps and other content?
Cliff Bleszinski: Absolutely.
We haven’t officially announced what our plans are,
but I can definitely confirm we will be doing downloadable
maps for Gears 2. That’s how you get your “legs”
for a game, but we will be shipping with a very healthy stable
of maps and modes out of the box. But shortly after we will
have some map packs available for download. You know, keep
the party going.
Cole is back, and ready for action.
One of the modes we played
today, “Meat Flag” was cracking me up. Can you
tell us anything about how the idea for that one came about?
Who’s idea was it to have the flag fight back?
Cliff Bleszinski:
That was one of our programmers, Robert McLoughlin. The creative
process we have at Epic – people always ask me, “what
do you do all day long?” And I say that I do a combination
of coming up with a lot of cool ideas of my own, selling the
team on what I think would be cool, as well as harvesting
the great ideas of the people I work with.
We knew we wanted new game modes in
Gears 2 and Robert came to Rod and I one day and said “hey
I think it would be cool if we did CTF.” And we thought,
we can’t just do CTF; Gears isn’t a multiplayer
game that’s about traversal. It’s not always about
grabbing a flag and running from point A to point B. We’re
really not that kind of game. We’re about spawning and
engaging, flanking people, taking cover and having teammates
lay down suppressing fire. We thought, what if we made it
so it tied into the whole hostage-taking mechanic and the
flag was a person? Then we thought “what? How’s
that going to work?” So we started thinking about the
fiction: what if the guy was a Stranded and the COG and the
Locust want to claim this person for God knows what. And then
the idea came in that he should be talking crap the whole
time and complaining.
So to claim the flag you’ve got
to drag him across the map, using your pistol and him as a
shield. Depending on which pistol you’re using you might
need support from your team as you drag him to the location.
You do move slower so you cant just run with the flag. And
by having one flag, it provides focus to the game. So it’s
our version of “one flag” with our own unique
Gears twist to it.
You’ve got one of the biggest game franchises
in the world right now, where do you go now? What’s
the future of the Gears franchise?
Cliff Bleszinski:
That’s the billion dollar question isn’t it? Yeah,
we’re just working towards making a cell phone version,
that’s the ultimate goal. That was sarcasm.
We never said we were making a trilogy.
Everybody always likes to put those words in our mouths. But
it remains to be seen what happens after Gears 2 hits. We’re
not going to sit here and say yeah, we’re doing Gears
3, 4, 5, 6. We’ll take it on a game by game basis. I
think if you set your game up for a trilogy and you tell gamers
it is, then gamers get defensive and say “oh really,
you’re that confident you’re going to make three
of these? I don’t know if I buy that.” So we’re
just gonna play it by ear, honestly. I’m not gonna lie,
I have eight billion universes kicking around in my head that
I want to do that I’m dying to get around to. But I’m
also madly in love with the Gears universe, so we’ll
see where it goes.
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